Georgian at Trump Jnr’s meeting

A United States-based employee of a Russian real estate company took part in a Trump Tower meeting in June last year between a Russian lawyer and Donald Trump Jnr, bringing to eight the number of known participants at the session that has emerged as a key focus of the investigation of the Trump campaign’s interactions with Russians.

Ike Kaveladze attended the meeting as a representative of Aras and Emin Agalarov, the father-and-son Russian developers who hosted the Trump-owned Miss Universe pageant in Moscow in 2013, according to Scott Balber, an attorney for the Agalarovs who said he also represents Kaveladze.

Balber said yesterday that he had received a phone call over the weekend from a representative of special counsel Robert Mueller asking if Kaveladze would agree to be interviewed. Balber said his client would co-operate.

The request is the first public indication that Mueller’s team is investigating the meeting.

A native of the Soviet republic of Georgia who went to the US in 1991, Kaveladze was the subject nearly two decades ago of a congressional inquiry into Russian money laundering in US banks, although he was never charged with a crime.

After the New York Times first reported the meeting, Trump Jnr said only that the lawyer had primarily discussed the adoption of Russian children by Americans.

Trump Jnr had agreed to meet the Russian lawyer on the promise that he would be provided damaging information about Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton as part of a Russian government effort to help his father’s presidential campaign, according to emails released by Trump Jnr last week.

Trump Jnr’s acknowledgment of the meeting undercut months of denials from top Trump aides that campaign officials had any contact with Russians before the November election.